


Experience: I reunited with the love of my life through The Guardian

by edna_blackadder



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Misuse of Public Fora, The Guardian - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28106496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edna_blackadder/pseuds/edna_blackadder
Summary: Two lost souls find their way back to one another by means of a national newspaper.
Relationships: Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 61
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	1. My life in sex

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JaneEyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneEyre/gifts).



It starts off as a laugh, mainly because she just really fucking needs one, and it’s not like there’s any chance he’ll see it. It’s not that she doesn’t think a cool sweary priest would read _The Guardian_ , but he’s not going to want the reminder of his transgression that this particular feature would bring.

Not to mention any transgressions that may have preceded her. She thinks she’s the only one since his calling, but he’d been there many times. How many, she’ll never know, but she suspects their totals might not be so different.

Anyway, he won’t read this. Pam probably controls church’s WiFi or something.

And would it matter if he did? He’s chosen God, and she’s been OK. It shouldn’t matter.

It should have passed.

She stares at her bedroom wall, gazing out at a crowd of unliving friends. ‘Can I do it?’ she asks. ‘Can I fucking do it?’

They have no answer; they never do. But in the back of her mind, Boo smiles.

‘Fuck it, I’m doing it,’ she says, and she hits ‘Send’.

*

Suffice it to say, he’s no longer enjoying going to bed at nine-thirty. The insomnia might be God’s way of needling him, or it might just be that he’d missed sleeping next to someone, and waking up next to someone, looking upon him as no Supreme Being can, a lot more than he’d missed sex. (And he hadn’t not missed sex.)

When prayer doesn’t do it and drink doesn’t either, he tries reading. First the Bible, then _Winnie the Pooh_ , then whatever articles pop as suggested for him. Eventually, it’s a quarter to midnight, and he’s drunkenly scrolling through the confessionals in _The Guardian_ Lifestyle section. Some of these move him, while others are _The Daily Mail_ by another name, but even the most inane offer a coveted dose of human connection, risk-free for the inherent lack of human connection.

Then he yelps. Out loud, which won’t please Pam. He blinks, and yes, he’s read it right: _My life in sex: the woman in love with a priest_.

It can’t be her, can it? What happened between them isn’t half as uncommon as it should be. It’s got to be someone else’s tragedy.

He doesn’t mean to click on it. Either he needs to clean his phone screen, or God has a point to make.

 _I’ve had a lot of sex,_ it begins. _From long-term relationships involving everything but love to one-nighters I still masturbate about to one-nighters I’m nauseated remembering. Most of those happened during a time in my life when my first, last, and only move to forget about my problems was an endless quest for cock, and occasionally twat._

 _You have to understand. I’m not a sex addict, because it’s not sex itself I’m addicted to. It’s the drama of it, of knowing that someone_ wants _my body. I made every bad decision in the book for more of that fix, until I had fucked everything in my life by fucking everyone who would have me._

 _Offered a second chance I didn’t deserve, I resolved to stop. Not forever, of course, just long enough to get my tolerance back to something resembling normal. Naturally, that’s when I met him: a Catholic priest, and a good one. He had given up sex forever—at least on paper—and I_ know _I should have stayed away. But he was charming, funny, cool, sweary, and devastatingly hot, and he wanted to know me as much as I wanted to know him. Too much, if I’m honest. I was working through a lot. I still am, and falling in love with him didn’t help that._

_One night, whiskey on my tongue and tears welling in my eyes, I confessed as much as I could bear. I mean literally, in his confessional. And I barely even remember what I said, but I know I it was almost true, and it worked. The one time I wasn’t trying, it worked. We kissed and nearly made it right there in the church, me working through impossible vestments, until a painting came clattering off the wall._

_His Holy Father didn’t approve of me. Within days, though, he showed up at my flat, and this time God wasn’t watching._

_The day after that, I told him I loved him. It wasn’t the first time I’d said it, but it probably was the first time I meant it. He said he loved me, but opted to stick with God. He’d told me before that if he fell in love with me, his life would be fucked. The part of me that would half like to learn to be a half-decent person hopes that’s not true. The part of me that’s me hopes it is true, because my life certainly is. My world is bigger than sex and bigger even than love, but now I know what I’m missing._

He sits bolt upright, his heart racing, and he drains an entire can of G&T.

His life is fucked, which he’s known from the moment a fox followed him home. He’s not sure which is worse: knowing she still carries a torch as searing as his own, or the tantalising hints at the bit of her never got to see. He’ll never forget how her body undid him, but it was her soul he wanted desperately and never quite got to lay bare.

 _Well,_ he thinks, opening another can as his better judgment fades into gin-soaked haze, _two can play at this game._

*

By the time her piece is printed, she’s almost forgot she ever sent it. She skims it between customers and mugs for her friends. She should be embarrassed, but it’s thrilling, really. Anonymity is by nature erotic, whether it’s a pickup in a bar or a questionable revelation at a Quaker meeting or a tell-all in a national newspaper. She smiles and scrolls down to the next confession, and the next.

Soon enough, they’re her new obsession. Sometimes she compares them to her own life, sometimes she masturbates about them, but more than either, she thinks of them as her community. Immersing herself in their escapades is like going to church, except they don’t ask for money and they don’t make small talk. In a literal sense, they’re her real friends.

Some weeks later, curled up in bed and eager for the latest, her fingers freeze in place: _My life in sex: the man whose peace is forever disturbed_.

‘My tits ruined your peace?’ she hears herself asking, in a distant echo from across time. ‘Guess so,’ she replies, smirking at her unreal friends as she clicks.

‘Shut up,’ she adds. ‘I know it’s not going to be him.’

 _I’ve had a lot of sex,_ it begins.

‘That’s original,’ she says, with a dramatic eyeroll for her audience.

_It didn’t ruin my life, like the sterner nuns in my family warned that it would, but it didn’t bring anything good, either._

But it is. It is him. She pours a mostly full glass of wine down her throat, and then she smiles for the crowd. ‘Well, here we go, then.’

_As the product of a legendarily screwed up family—_

‘Well, you’ve seen mine; we could co-write the book on that.’ She grins and pours some more wine. ‘Between your pedophile brother and my sociopathic stepmother, we’d make millions.’

_—I explored every avenue of rebellion known to man, and some criminally unknown, all in the name of a doomed quest for inner peace. Forced to turn my life around, I found that peace in faith._

_I’d tried the atheist thing, back when I wanted to seem edgy, but in my heart I was never quite able to let the idea of God go. When I came back to the Church, I found support and affirmation, as though He understood and didn’t begrudge me my youthful mistakes. Then I felt a calling to serve, to repay my debt to the Church by helping others find peace in it as well. Maybe I could finally connect with people in a way that would bring something good, for them and for me._

_It would mean loving them as a Father, and only as a Father, but despite my track record, I didn’t think that I would miss sex that much. (Giving up alcohol or profanity would have been a different fucking story.) Celibacy would be mercifully uncomplicated, I thought. I sincerely believed that, until I met her._

_At first, she was a beautiful enigma. Then she was the most open book you could imagine, calmly admitting to a life-altering trauma in the middle of a restaurant. Then it turned out this was merely her way of rescuing someone else from that trauma, an act of love such as I’ve never witnessed, and not for lack of trying, every Sunday. I wanted her, mind, body, and soul, just like she wanted me, and she did want me. She made herself clear on that point, even as she remained maddeningly vague on others, like just where she went when she’d disappear, randomly, in the middle of our conversations. Her own head, to be sure, but where in there? I still want to know._

_I tried to wish away my feelings for her, but I might as well have tried to part the Red Sea. I went back to Him the next day, but months later, my penance is still ongoing. I love her as anything but a Father, and I fear my peace is forever disturbed. Perhaps we’ll wave to one another in Purgatory._

‘Well,’ she says to her friends, ‘mission accomplished.’

But it’s not that simple, and she knows it. She’d love to hightail it over to his church, brandishing her phone and demanding confirmation, and she’d be justified in it, certainly much more so than showing up at Harry’s in her underwear. But his conclusion makes clear that nothing has changed, and nothing she does can change his mind.

Well…except one thing, perhaps. _I still want to know._

‘Careful what you wish for,’ she says, and she thinks Boo approves.


	2. Experience

He should never have sent his piece in, and he knows it. He’d love to blame it on the G&Ts, or the whiskey, but he knows alcohol didn’t bring this on. It may have facilitated it, but an entirely different addiction is the culprit here.

Maybe she’ll never see it. Maybe she was as drunk when she submitted her piece as he was when he submitted his, and she’s forgotten about the entire affair. Maybe any notifications from the paper went to her Spam folder. He can hope, even if he doesn’t dare pray.

He’s mortified when it’s printed, but more relieved than he should be. He scrolls through the comments suggesting that he and the woman who fucked a priest get together sometime and doesn’t know if he wants to laugh, or cry, or scream.

It occurs to him far too late that if she does read it, she might come over, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if that happens. It doesn’t, but the thought keeps him up at night. Several times he’s nearly late for mass, because a quarter to midnight has become three-thirty. He combs the Lifestyle confessionals each night in what he tells himself is a form of self-defense, not the new addiction it is.

It takes weeks, but eventually there is something to defend himself against, slotted innocently into a different subsection. He blinks at the title: _Experience: I narrate my life to unliving witnesses_.

At first, he doesn’t get it. He reads it simply because he reads all of them.

 _Many people have an imaginary friend,_ it begins. _I have a multitude of them. They’re not friends, exactly, but an imaginary audience._

_I’m told that some people like to imagine themselves as the hero—or the villain—in a novel, or in a film or television series. What I do is similar, I suppose, but not the same. There’s no narrative—well, there was, but that was when I thought I understood people. There is simply an audience watching me, all the time, passing judgment on me._

_Well. That makes them sound meaner than they are. I said they’re not friends, but they are, following me where no living friend can reach. But you can’t watch someone without forming an impression, and when I want to make a good impression, or at least sand the edges off a horrific one, I make jokes._

_My sister once said, angry with me for making a joke to her real friends, that I would always be interesting (whereas she was merely successful beyond my wildest dreams, with an over-the-top huge office). She doesn’t understand that I’m no more naturally interesting than anyone else, but I’ve learnt to be because I can’t disappoint my audience._

_Yes, of course I know they’re imaginary. I don’t actually physically picture people watching me. They’re merely a concept, the idea of friends, because when I created them, I hadn’t any. I’d lost two of the most important people in my life in in the space of three years. I had no one I could talk to, no one I could confess to. I talk to my unliving friends all the time—though less of late—and I’ve done it in front of everyone, from my family, to the customers at my workplace, even a counsellor once. Only one person has ever noticed, a priest. It’s always flummoxed me how he could see it and no one else could. Maybe he instinctively knew I needed to confess something, or maybe he’s just used to talking to someone who doesn’t exist._

That’s when the penny drops, and so does his half-empty glass, shattering on the floor. Pam won’t be happy, but he can worry about that tomorrow. Tonight he can read that paragraph and again, surer each time that it’s her, and that she wrote it as direct response to his ill-judged tribute to their ill-judged affair.

Then he scrolls up and realises she never intended even a veneer of secrecy; her name and a radiant photograph he mustn’t save but will do are right there at the top. He wonders how he missed her picture there, and just as quickly comes up with the answer he can’t face: she was already in his head, because she’s always in his head.

He reads the rest of the piece, scrolling back up at intervals to stare into her eyes, the windows to that soul he covets as madly as ever. He’s intoxicated, and not with G&T. He opens another can in a futile attempt to catch it up.

He wonders if he ought to write back, as it were, or just leave that out there on its own. He shouldn’t be communicating with her at all, especially not in a forum that will require his face and name. It won’t bring any good, even if it’s all he lives for these days. The best thing for both of them is to just let it lie.

Still, she wrote this—or told it to someone on _The Guardian_ staff, apparently—for him, as a…confession? Peace offering? He can’t be sure, but he ought to at least acknowledge it. Perhaps he can reply with something unrelated, containing none of the questions he’s dying to ask her, showing he’s read her piece but putting an end to this illicit public note-passing before it fucks his life even more (as if it hasn’t already done).

But what can he say? _Experience: I met my soulmate, rejected her for God, but can’t let her go_. Wrong message (right message).

But perhaps there’s one thing. One experience of his that’s sufficiently weird to graffiti on the wall of this public toilet confessional and, he’s told, highly amusing if you’re anyone else. He clicks the email link.

*

At this point, she knows it will be a few weeks. She picks up and abandons new hobbies, tweaks the café menu, and even visits Claire and Klare in their cold, beautiful, and dark home, where the greatest culture shock is seeing her sister happy.

By the time a response appears, she´d given up hope of one, figuring he either didn’t get it or just didn’t see it. He’s probably avoiding _The Guardian_ like he avoids her café. But then it appears, with all the subtlety of a fart in a crowded lift: _Experience: I’ve been hounded by foxes my entire adult life_ , credited to his name and bearing a photo that shows off his arms to their best advantage. She saves it, and then clicks.

 _It started years ago. I was in a toilet on a train, and a fox tried to get in the window. Then once I was at a monastery, waking from a dream, and there was a fox standing over me, as if to say:_ we’re watching you _._

 _I’ve seen them everywhere, from Dublin to Rome, from gardens to theme parks, even once at a public library. Wherever I go, foxes are never far behind, including in places where every halfway reliable source assures me they’re not native and_ shouldn’t _show up._

_I’m not afraid of them, exactly. That’s to say, not of the foxes themselves. But I wish I could know what it is about me that attracts them. No one I know has had animals drawn to them like this, including people who work with animals for a living. I’ve read so many books on them that Amazon probably thinks I’m a fox boy, and not one has been of help._

_I’ve already tried changing my cologne—I swap brands every time I finish one. It hasn’t deterred the foxes. Most recently, one followed me on a long walk home from a London bus stop. All the way home, it never took its beady eyes off me._

_If I had three wishes, I’d use the first to grant foxes the power of speech, so I could ask what they want from me. (I’d use the second to undo that, after I’d got my answer.) For now, I’ll just have to pray they aren’t rabid._

She skims the rest, but she’s not mistaken. There’s nothing in here for her, only things she already knew. She shared one of her deepest secrets, and in turn he’s offered this.

‘Does he think this is some kind of bloody game?’ she asks. In the heat of their judgment, she adds, ‘I know that’s not fair.’

She vows to stop writing, maybe even to stop reading, but she’d miss her real friends. This accidental experiment may not have brought any good from him, but the others’ stories have made her laugh and cry.

Maybe crying is what she needs to do.


	3. A letter to...

Days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months. That door is, finally, well and truly closed. and he ought to be glad of it. He hopes she’s not merely got the hint but moved on properly, because at least one of them deserves to be happy. As long as she doesn’t ask him to officiate the wedding, his best wishes will be as sincere as any he’s offered, the empty G&T can crushed in his white-knuckled grip and his red-eyed exhaustion as he scrolls through Lifeandstyle at half five in the morning notwithstanding.

Then he sees it: _A letter to…the friend who deserved better in my hands_. Fuck, that’ll be worth ten _Winnie the Pooh_ quotes. He clicks on it.

_We met in Year Seven. I did a fart during maths that I could have kept quiet, but didn’t because I hated Mr Wilkes, who couldn’t shut up about how much I was not my insanely dedicated sister. You hated him because he caught you passing a note to a boy and humiliated you for it. You laughed at his beet-red face and cartoonish wagging finger, and my one true friendship was born._

_From that day to adulthood, it was us against the world, lifting each other up because it was the only way we could lift ourselves up. We smoked together, drank together, confided every sexual milestone. We learned to cook together, the only thing either of us was ever good at. We took that skill and went into business together. Neither of us had any idea what we were doing, but together we could do anything. The only person I was closer to was my mum._

_When Mum died, I told you in despair that I didn’t know what to do with all the love I had for her, that I didn’t know where to put it now. Right off, you said that you’d take it; in fact, I had to give it to you. And I should have done, because you’d never given me anything less. You kept our business going while I, in a panic, got you a guinea pig as a birthday present because I was so disconnected I forgot your birthday until the morning of, when I saw strangers’ wishes on social media, because all I could think about was sex. Fucking anyone and everyone willing wasn’t a healthy way to deal with my grief, but it turns out it’s not an uncommon reaction._

_In the midst of my spiral, you met a guy you liked. A lot. I wasn’t sure what the big deal was, but you loved him. You loved him like you loved me, and he turned out to be equally undeserving. One night we were all supposed to watch a film together, but you had a headache and couldn’t come. You assumed we’d cancel; maybe we even assumed we’d cancel, but as we stared at one another, alone, and split a bottle of wine, I realised that he wanted me._

_I should have told him to go fuck himself, but I was addicted to feeling wanted. After another bottle, I could almost see what you were seeing. I ended up initiating things._

_The next day, he confessed to you that he fucked someone else. He didn’t say it was me. Maybe he thought I’d deny it, and you’d believe me. The worst part is you would’ve believed me, even though you were in love with him._

_I’d already failed you, but there was worse to come. You decided to injure yourself on purpose and punish him by not letting him visit you in hospital. It was a terrible plan that could only have been cooked up by someone who’d spent the last year taking care of her fragile, fucked-up, unreciprocating friend and then had the man she loved casually inform her that he’d fucked someone else. I should’ve at least tried to talk you out of it, but that might’ve meant a confession, which might’ve meant you’d walk away at last, and I’d be completely fucking alone._

_So I said nothing, and a bike flipped you in front of a semi. You and three other people died that day, all because of my careless disrespect and failure to live up to my promise to give you all the love I’d had for Mum, even as you gave it to me, day in and day out, and never complained._

_‘I’m sorry’ will never be enough. Nor will saying that since then, I’ve tried to live a better life, not least as it’s not strictly true. You were the only thing keeping me from rock bottom. I’d thought I was already there, but when I lost you I discovered I had even further to fall, and I nearly followed you into oblivion._

_At the last moment, a man who’d screwed up much as I’d done showed up to continue his quest for atonement by setting me on mine. He saved me, as I should have saved you. He gave me a second chance. All I can do now is take it and use it to honour you, in every way I can think of. Thank you for my life. It should have been yours, and I wish I could give it to you._

He closes the laptop, tears streaming down his face. The guinea pig is the only clue, but it’s her all over. This is what she couldn’t tell him, and he has his own stories not unlike it.

Those stories are the reason he’s here, the real reason. He’s told himself it’s about finding peace, but it’s not and it’s never been. It’s about hiding from his past, seeking absolution for his mistakes without earning it. Hail Marys are easier than facing up to the myriad ways you’ve screwed up your life and working to make amends. Living your life in accordance with the whims of an at best outmoded, at worst totalitarian hierarchy is easier than doing anything on your own. Celibacy is easier than romantic relationships.

She’s the bravest person he’s ever known. It will take him weeks to pluck up the same courage.

The bishop doesn’t understand, but he believes that God will do.

*

‘Is this you?’ he asks, when he shows up at her flat unannounced, holding a faded _Guardian_ open to her letter to Boo, blurred with tear stains. She nods without speaking. She’s not sure this isn’t a dream, or a nightmare, or both.

‘This is what you couldn’t say,’ he says, and she nods again. She looks to her friends for help, and his eyes follow hers.

‘But you’re ready to say it now.’ Another nod. She can’t imagine how he knew. She didn’t write it for him.

‘Then it’s my turn to be honest,’ he says, his voice ragged and hesitant. ‘But I’m not sure what to do.’ That’s when she spots the absence of a collar on his beautiful neck.

Her heart skips several beats before she remembers Godmother’s disappointment the night they met. Wordless, she gestures to her own neck, and he nods. ‘Say something,’ she says to herself, by way of her friends. ‘Say something, say something, say something—’

‘Oh,’ she says out loud. It could have been worse, but it’s a more jubilant ‘oh’ than she intended.

‘Yes,’ he says, his eyes downcast. Then he looks up at her. ‘Tell me what to do.’

For once, she knows, and she smiles. ‘Kneel.’


End file.
